It’s not exactly news that Derek Jeter returned from the disabled list only to hop right back on to it recently. Jeter appeared in just a single game, going 1-for-4 with an RBI and a run.

After recovering from the left ankle injury that sidelined him in the playoffs last year, he’s now dealing with a right thigh issue. The injuries are unrelated but worrisome nonetheless. After all, despite the ankle injury, Jeter was still the 15th shortstop off the board based on average draft position, going around pick 170. He also remains 40% owned.

But should there be any expectation for The Captain when he eventually does return? He’ll surely be back, with a couple months to go and then a minimum $8M player option for 2014 that could be larger based on certain incentives.
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Yesterday, I wrote about some interesting findings regarding how the Rogers Centre plays and how it’s reputation for being a hitter’s park is somewhat misconstrued when looked at on a day-to-day basis. I cut the analysis short because the Dome was expected to be closed (it had stormed all night and was overcast in the morning) but it was open. It was also 75 degrees, with an 11MPH wind blowing out to center, and there was just a lone home run hit. That’s a day after eight (!) were hit on Friday with the Dome closed.

That ultimate small sample might lead one to believe the park plays better closed, but Rob Pettapiece found this not to be true.

Given the past two days and the fact that I’ll be at The Stadium Formerly Known as SkyDome a few times in the next week, I decided to dive in a bit deeper. I pulled weather and scoring data from 2010 to the present and summated it after the jump.
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Rogers Centre is sometimes grouped in with the “joke stadium” crowd for being a park that is very hitter friendly. It sure looked that way on Friday, too, with eight home runs flying out when the Jays and Rays did battle (8-5 final).

However, a recent article by Rob Pettapiece at Baseball Prospectus shed light on an interesting conclusion – Rogers Centre primarily plays “up” in seasonal numbers because the retractable roof prevents games from being played at cold temperatures. It takes any poor conditioned game and makes it 72 and sunny.

This afternoon, the Dome is likely to be closed unless I get a nice change in weather fortunes as I head out to the game. So with Mark Buehrle and Jeremy Hellickson on the mound, is today a good day to pick Rays or Jays?
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The mid-way point of the MLB season is a good time for fantasy players to sit back and take stock of their lot in life. For seasonal players, that means identifying areas of improvement and deciding whether to buy or sell in dynasty leagues.

For those who play in daily leagues, though, there’s a lot less to do. If you’re a DraftStreet or Fangraphs The Game addict, the last four days have probably been excruciating. But just because there aren’t set rosters and waiver wires to scourge during the four-day off-period doesn’t mean daily players can’t do some reflecting and improve for the second half.

Take a look at your bankroll compared to the start of the season and evaluate how you’ve done. If you’re meticulous and keep notes on your selections, see if you’ve been playing better in double-up formats or win-it-all formats. Have days with thin schedules hurt your payouts? It’s never too late to alter a gaming and/or investment strategy.
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Last week, I wrote about Hanley Ramirez in this space. Because it was a look at Ramirez’ success over the past eight years, the natural comparison to another top shortstop in that span, Jose Reyes, came up.

But it was an interesting question in the comments that I wanted to dive into today: Is Jean Segura going to be a Jose Reyes-type fantasy value for the next decade?

No two players are ever identical, so that’s the kind of question that is very difficult to answer effectively. However, we have some data that we can look at to try and compare the two, and it bears out striking resemblances.

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I’m not sure if there’s value in this, but I’m kicking the tires on making my Sunday Daily Fantasy spot a “week in review” kind of piece, touching on what some of the others looked at, in terms of research, throughout the week. Let’s try it for today and then get to the Daily Five.

Monday: Talley looks at using ROS ZIPS to find value. It’s a long but potentially valuable process.
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The Astros, Mets and Pirates all have Thursday off. That’s three of the four most strikeout-prone offenses in baseball unavailable to pick on with a streamer or a starter in daily fantasy leagues. The Braves remain, but Mat Latos is going to come at a hefty price. So should we throw up our hands and give up on trying to find strikeouts Thursday?

Well thanks to some hard work from Steve Staude, we have a better idea of how strikeouts develop based on pitcher and hitter profiles. I encourage you to download his tool and play around with it, as I have for today’s match-ups.

Based on some complicated methodology, we can plug in league, player and pitcher strikeout rates and get an expected strikeout rate. As an example, the Twins strikeout at a roughly average 20.2% rate (20.7% against lefties), while Matt Moore strikes out 22.8% of hitters he faces. You may think he’d then be expected to strikeout roughly 21.5% of Twins batters, splitting the difference, and you’d be right – Steve’s formula spits out 21.9% as the expected strikeout rate (using the Logistic method – the other methods are more bullish on Moore).
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When Hanley Ramirez came on the fantasy scene in 2006, he immediately became a top option at the shortstop position. For the remainder of that decade, he sat on or near the podium for fantasy shortstop value and real world shortstop value.

(BM Rank in this table refers to his position rank by Baseball Monster’s fantasy valuation tool, using batting average as the rate stat for the league.)

Basically, “been pimpin since been pimpin…” Hanley Ramirez has been one of the top shortstops in baseball his entire career, topping the position’s leaderboard in wins above replacement with 34.1 in that span. This isn’t really news, but it’s worth a reminder since some may have forgotten just how good he was. Somehow, he seems underrated at this point in his career.

And that’s because he took a dip over the past few years, only to return to peak levels in the last six weeks.
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Hello Daily Fantasy friends. Not much of a pre-amble for today as I’m writing this late on Saturday night. Sorry about that, but take the recs below and I’ll try to provide some match-up notes beyond the five daily five.

*San Diego at Washington has a high temperature and a major wind blowing out.

*Ditto for Atlanta at Philly and it goes double for any lefties, as the wind is strong out to right.

*Righties in the Pittsburgh at Chicago match-up have a favourable wind out to left.

*110 degrees in Arizona? Even with a wind blowing in, that kind of temperature will play up at Chase Field.

*Monster winds blowing to left for Baltimore at New York with 90-degree temperature to boot.

*Even more monster-ish (is that a word? Probably not) in Kansas City, with a 95-degree temperature and an 18 MPH (!) wind to left.

*Somehow, with heat all over the map, Los Angeles at San Francisco finds itself as a 65-degree game, playing down offenses.

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Ahh, Rangers Ballpark. You wonderful, offense-inflating yet confusing masterpiece.

The home of the Texas Rangers has been the subject of some discussion in response to some of my recommendations of late. At times, admittedly unsure of the “best” wind conditions for the park, I have touted players because of a jet stream effect and/or because of a wind blowing out to right field.

It’s been suggested that the jet stream effect is most impactful when the wind blows in from center, causing a stream out to right. To me, this is the same as a wind to right, but I’m nothing close to a meteorologist. Since I couldn’t find an article (in an admittedly quick search) explaining the conditions there, I grabbed some data via the BRef Play Index to try and make heads or tails of the park.
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